PETER HITCHENS: If policemen don't scare you, they are not doing their job 

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What is the point of the police if wrongdoers aren’t afraid of them? Yet Durham Constabulary has actually produced a poster chiding parents for using the police as bogeymen.

It pleads: ‘Parents, please don’t tell your children that we will take them off to jail if they are bad. We want them to run to us if they are scared, not be scared of us.’

Is that really what the police are for? If anyone runs to them for aid, it is because they imagine they are fearless defenders of right against wrong, who can be trusted even if they are frightening, and who will scare away bad people. But is that what they now are?

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Wrong message: The poster from Durham Constabulary appeals to parents to not use the police as bogeymen

The poster features a picture of a gently smiling officer in a short-sleeved shirt. It leaves out his bottom half, so you cannot see if he is carrying the standard non-confrontational police armoury of clubs, handcuffs, pepper spray and electric-shock dispenser, which he may need to deal with the increasingly violent society which liberal ideas have created.

I am not surprised this comes from Durham, whose Chief Constable, Mike Barton, advocates giving free heroin to criminal drug abusers, and once told me he was ‘proud to be a social worker’.

Now, as it happens, I would never tell a child or teenager to stop doing something in case the police come and arrest him. I know perfectly well that, if I were ever stupid enough to confront an underage wrongdoer, related to me or not, the police would arrest me, not him. I’ve heard or read of quite enough cases where this has happened, especially to people who have tried to defend themselves or their property against feral children.

But millions of people – usually those who have had no recent dealings with this surly and peevish nationalised industry – do retain a simple faith in the police, inherited from another age. They would rather their children were scared of getting into trouble than that they did stupid things. They know that the young all think they are immortal.

Most teenagers can’t – for instance – believe that they could become irreversibly mentally ill after using cannabis. And they come under huge peer pressure to take such drugs at their schools, where cannabis is often sold nearby or on the premises. 

How useful it would be for their mothers and fathers if they could credibly warn that they risk being caught, given a criminal record and banned for life from travelling to the USA.

But, as the Durham poster makes horribly clear, there is no such risk. The modern police are weird paramilitary social workers, jingling with weapons and armoured with astonishing powers, but not interested in enforcing the laws that matter to us most.

Perhaps one day the few remaining police stations will become heroin dispensaries, serving the people they failed to deter from drug-taking when they were younger.

And so bad people are not afraid of the police, though good people are increasingly afraid of being run in by them for saying the wrong thing.

It’s a pity. Fear is good and useful, when it’s deployed on the side of common sense. But these days what we mainly fear is chaos, and a callous, incompetent state that views us as a nuisance.

How interesting that the new head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, Camilla Cavendish, is an openly declared supporter of the legalisation of drugs. Such a view, publicly expressed on the record, would once have disqualified anyone from this job.

Ms Cavendish was an Oxford contemporary of David Cameron, and even went to the same college. He once signed a Commons report calling for weaker drug policies. Does she say openly what he thinks privately?

A royal luvvies affair

Until recently you could reliably assume that the acting profession and the media were stuffed with fashionable republicans, snobbishly looking down on monarchy. Yet a series of films and plays about our present Queen and her stuttering father seem to have softened the thespians’ radicalism.

The latest surprise is the sight of Kate Winslet (who insists her origins are working-class) in A Little Chaos, helping Alan Rickman to soften the image of that tricky old despot, Louis XIV of France. If tough old Lefty Helen Mirren can warm towards the Crown, after impersonating Her Majesty, who’s next? Since reigning and acting have so much in common, it’s surprising all actors aren’t fervent royalists.

Surprise: Kate Winslet as Sabine De Barra in A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman, who also co-stars

George Osborne’s non-existent economic miracle continues. Not only are house prices now galloping upwards in a mad and ruinous frenzy. The official growth figures (about whose first draft the media fell silent in the days before the Election) now confirm that economic growth has slowed violently, dropping to a miserable 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year. The main cause is a combination of falling exports and rising imports, invariable symptoms of deep trouble.

Fight IS - and get something even worse

Even though we no longer have an Army worth the name, since David Cameron slashed the defence budget to pay for the scandal known as ‘Foreign Aid’, voices are being raised to suggest that we intervene again in Iraq.

This is clueless in the extreme. If we send soldiers there, RAF Brize Norton will soon be welcoming planes loaded with flag-wrapped coffins – and in the end we will leave, beaten, yet again. The rise of Islamic State is the direct result of two disastrous foreign policy mistakes, both so obviously doomed that even I could see it at the time.

The 2003 overthrow of Saddam and the 2011 Webstern-backed undermining of the Assad government in Syria were both based on the idea that if you get rid of a tyrant, something better will automatically follow.

This isn’t true. In fact both these adventures released forces we barely understand and cannot control. There is no sign that anyone in London or Washington has learned anything as a result.

Our pious horror at the intolerant and repressive behaviour of Islamic State is bitterly funny, given that it is really not that different from the policies of our close ally, Saudi Arabia.

You may remember that flags flew at half-mast in London recently to mark the death of the Saudi king, and that British Royalty and politicians are frequent honoured guests in the Saudi capital. I am not against our having good relations with Riyadh. It is a sound principle of wise foreign policy to deal with whatever government is firmly in control of the territory.

We recognise many horrible governments all over the world, and have learned to live happily with grisly Sinn Fein right next door. In which case we may soon have to consider dealing with Islamic State too. Don’t rule it out. It may be better than the alternative.